Artist: Lou Donaldson
Album: The Righteous Reed! The Best Of Poppa Lou
Genre: Hard Bop, Soul-Jazz
Label: Blue Note/EMI
Released: 1994
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Alligator Bogaloo (6:54)
- Rev. Moses (6:25)
- Peepin' (8:19)
- Midnight Creeper (6:31)
- Say It Loud! (I'm Black And I'm Proud) (7:31)
- Snake Bone (9:29)
- Turtle Walk (7:50)
- Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky (From Now On) (5:28)
- Hamp's Hump (4:23)
- If There's Hell Below (We're All Going To Go) (9:05)
- Sassy Soul Strut (4:37)
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Don't ya just love 'em? Jazz critics that is. I was reading just the other day what a complete waste of Lou Donaldson's ample talents his late 60's boogaloo beat records are. Well I am sorry - but I think they're great! It's all an attitude - sure LD's blowing is represented better elsewhere - but that just isn't the point. What we have here is archetypal party music, be it a scene from a 1960's movie or the Wag one Monday in the late 80's bursting at the seems as "Rev. Moses" shifts up a gear.
Lou Donaldson was always a populist; joining Blue Note in the early 50's, he was one of those who popularised the soul jazz shuffle with best selling albums "Blues Walk", "Gravy Train", "Natural Soul" and "Good Gracious." At the same time his bands became the testing ground for new talent, with the exceptional rhythm section of Patton, Green and Dixon emerging from his band.
By 1967 Lou had spent the best part of four years away from Blue Note, recording in Chicago for Chess's jazz subsidiaries Ango and Cadet. For his first release back on the Blue Note block he'd put together one mother of a new rhythm section, Lonnie Smith on Organ, George Benson on guitar and drumming duties covered by Leo Morris who would later be known as Idris Muhammad. The album "Alligator Bogaloo" became his biggest seller and the albums just kept on rolling. With Morris as pretty much a constant, the band evolved throughout the period as guitarists Jimmy Ponder and Melvin Sparks and organists Charles Earland and Leon Spencer Jnr. joined the array of talent.
The band always had a groove and understood both the energy and the limitations of the genre. Be it the slamming danceability of "Turtle Walk" or the sinuous funkiness of "Sassy Soul Strut", this is music for enjoyment and not thesis. A waste of talent? Get outta here!
Dean Rudland